


Beacon

by altairattorney



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: GIANT SPOILERS, Gen, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4683764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A black, cold beacon, in the midst of all that darkness. So peculiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beacon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



> Many are the human sources of inspiration and joy. The most important of them all are the people who lead us home in bad times, and can show us the way always. laughingpineapple is one of my beacons. To you, with care and respect.

Everyone has nightmares, but few people know them as well as Jowd does.

Living in one for years wounds just about anyone, and not even erasing the facts could soothe the memory. The paradoxes stayed – still alive, still dead. The worst is having plenty of people who ask him what is wrong, without the smallest possibility to explain.

He tries his best to heal. He really does. Still, there are nights in which Jowd loses track of everything, and no clock or calendar can help him tell the time he is truly in.

He gets up and walks around the bed, in the heart of the night. The ghost of that one night, when he also stayed up in a race against time, keeps sneaking up his legs. He is caught in a waking dream – metal in his hand, trigger a pull away – until Alma wakes up, and stops him, somehow. For the time being.

She does what she can. It is a lot, considering how little she knows. He still hasn’t found a way to force it all into a version that adds up, and her face says it all about it.

There is no true solution to it, anyway. As long as he hides the truth, he cannot hope her presence will fix everything. Jowd knows this might be forever.

But spotting Sissel in the morning, curled up on his bed with fake indifference, is enough to keep it at bay for at least some more time.

It is part of his being a cat, maybe, or maybe not at all. Jowd cannot claim to be an expert. But there is surely something in his moves, or in the unbreakable calm of his eyes. Even when he takes a nap, the wisdom of timeless creatures shines through the whole of his dead body.

Sissel speaks to him that way, and Jowd captures every word. The messages he sends him are soothingly identical to each other. To walk with calm, and try to live without worries.

There is something Sissel does when he walks. He fixes those yellow eyes in his, long and steady, before he does the same with the distance he just left behind.

And when he turns to the road they have yet to walk on, he lets his paw hesitate, no more than one inch above ground. The wisdom in that gesture does not fit a kitten. That’s where Sissel betrays himself, sometimes – but not to Jowd. Jowd knows it all.

He invites him to go on, in the easiest way. The past is done, and the doors of the future are open to anyone. Come to think of it, Jowd says to himself, they all deserve it.

The precision of cats is unbelievable. Jowd is led astray by memories, and Sissel inevitably leads him home. A black, cold beacon, in the midst of all that darkness. So peculiar.

Then again, nothing about them is truly ordinary anymore.


End file.
